Soros Centers for Contemporary Art

The SCCA was an autonomous regional program of the Open Society Institute (OSI). The network was established in Eastern Europe during the early nineties by the American philanthropist, stock investor, and political activist George Soros. The SCCA was an institutional mechanism of the post-socialist transition or normalization, and its primary role was the modernization of the artistic discourse in the former socialist countries and the republics of the former USSR. The Soros centers sprouted from a small program called Soros Foundation Fine Arts Documentation Center which was established in 1985 in the Budapest Műcsarnok (Kunsthalle), as part of a cooperation between the Műcsarnok and Soros Foundation Hungary. In the early nineties, under the directorship of Suzanne Mészöly, this program was renamed “Soros Center for Contemporary Art” and following Soros’ suggestion it was implement it other Eastern European countries. In 1992, in addition to the already existent SCCA Budapest, the OSI opened five more offices in Bratislava [1], Moscow, Prague, Tallinn and Warsaw; in 1993, there were established offices in Bucharest, Riga, Vilnius, Kiev, Ljubljana [2] [3], Zagreb [4] and Sofia. From 1994 to 1999 more centers were opened in St. Petersburg, Belgrade (1994), Skopje, Chișinău (1996), Sarajevo (1996), Odessa (1996), Almaty (1997) increasing their number to 19. (Source)

Literature

• András Zwickl, "Five Years", in SCCA Bulletin 1991-1994, eds. Suzanne Mészöly and Andrea Szekeres, Budapest: Soros Center for Contemporary Arts, 1994, pp 15-22. [5]
• The Soros Centers for Contemporary Arts Quarterly 1, 1996, 40 pp.
• Cãlin Dan, "The Dictatorship of Good Will", Nettime, 10 May 1997.
• Geert Lovink, "The Art of Being Independant: on NGOs and the Soros debate", Nettime, 13 May 1997.
• Ieva Astahovska, "Deviņdesmito gadu “imaginārais muzejs”", Studia 56:5, 2007. Interview. [6] (Latvian)
• Octavian Eşanu, The Transition of The Soros Centers to Contemporary Art: The Managed Avant-Garde, Kyiv: CCCK, 2008, 20 pp.
• Nina Czegledy, Andrea Szerekes, "Agents for Change: The Contemporary Art Centres of the Soros Foundation and C3", Third Text 23, 2009, pp 251-259.
• Jānis Borgs, "Sorosa laiks / The Soros Era", in Deviņdesmitie: laikmetīgā māksla Latvijā / Nineties: Contemporary Art in Latvia, ed. Ieva Astahovska, Riga: Laikmetīgās mākslas centrs, 2010, pp 42-59. [7] (Latvian)/(English)
• Inke Arns, "Translocal Alliances of the 1990s: the OSTranenie Video Festival, the Soros Centers for Contemporary Art Network, and the Syndicate Mailinglist", in Gateways: Art and Networked Culture / Kunst und vernetzte Kultur, ed. Sabine Himmelsbach, Ostfildern: Hatje Cantz, and Tallinn: Kumu Art Museum, 2011.
• Mara Ratiu, "Romanian Contemporary Visual Arts World After 1989: Tension and Fragmentation", Studia Ubb. Philosophia 56:3, 2011, pp 107-126.
• Naomi Hennig, "Footnotes On Art and Finances: George Soros and What Remains: Soros Art Funding in Ex Yu", c2011.
• Octavian Eşanu, "What Was Contemporary Art?", ARTMargins 1:1, May 2012, pp 5-28.
• Željka Tonković, Sanja Sekelj, "Annual Exhibitions of the Soros Center for Contemporary Art Zagreb as a Place of Networking / Godišnje izložbe Soros centra za suvremenu umjetnost Zagreb kao mjesto umrežavanja", Zivot umjetnosti 99, Jan 2016, pp 80-95. (English)/(Croatian)
• Karolina Łabowicz-Dymanus, Synchronizacja w Sieci: Centra Sztuki Współczesnej Sorosa: cztery modele: Budapeszt, Kijów, Tallin, Warszawa, Warsaw: Instytut Sztuki PAN, 2016, 312 pp. PhD dissertation. [8] (Polish)
• Izabel Galliera, "Antipolitics: Exhibitions at the Soros Centres for Contemporary Art", ch 5 in Galliera, Socially Engaged Art After Socialism: Art and Civil Society in Central and Eastern Europe, I.B. Tauris, 2017, pp 81-111.
• Kristóf Nagy, "From Fringe Interest to Hegemony: The Emergence of the Soros Network in Eastern Europe", ch 3 in Globalizing East European Art Histories: Past and Present, eds. Beáta Hock and Anu Allas, Routledge, 2018, pp 53-63.
• “The Influencing Machine” at Galeria Nicodim, Bucharest. Aaron Moulton, Luchezar Boyadjiev, Călin Dan, and Geert Lovink in conversation", Mousse Magazine, 20 Apr 2019.
• “The Soros Center was a Perfect Machine”: An Exchange between Aaron Moulton and Geert Lovink, ARTMargins, 15 Jul 2019.
• Sepp Eckenhaussen, Scenes of Independence: Cultural Ruptures in Zagreb (1991-2019), Amsterdam: Institute of Network Cultures, 2019, 276 pp. [9]

Exhibitions about SCCA

• The Influencing Machine, Galeria Nicodim, Bucharest, 14 Mar-20 Apr 2019. Walkthrough video.
• control < cultivate > evolve: Soros Center for Contemporary Arts – Ljubljana (1993–1999). Its Organisation and Impact, Škuc Gallery, Ljubljana, 16 May-6 Jun 2019. Curated by Jasna Jernejšek and Miha Kelemina. Gallery presentation of the archive.